Over the last five years, I’ve created a lot of free resources for poets. My publication, Vita Brevis Press, is a bestselling small poetry publisher dedicated to emerging poets. These resources have helped hundreds of poets get their first publication, and thousands of poets find new homes for their work. Whether you’re a seasoned poet or just getting started, you’ll find something of value here.
You can use the table of contents below to quickly navigate through these free resources for poets, including lists of poetry magazines and guides about publication.
For the first time in nearly five years, Vita Brevis is not open for submissions. (Read the full story here.)
Poetry Magazine Lists
(Beginner) List of High Acceptance Rate Poetry Magazines
By far, the most popular resource on Vita Brevis is the “Ultimate List of Poetry Magazines with High Acceptance Rates.” This is one of the only lists out there that was curated by an actual editor of a poetry magazine. The idea is pretty simple; while there are thousands of beginner magazines that accept poetry submissions, only a fraction have real editorial standards. Others are mostly blogs or loose student-run projects.
Of course, those have their value too. But I urge new poets to only submit their work to publications that have real editorial standards — not magazines that accept just about anything in order to get more page visits and ad revenue. Of course, the onus shouldn’t be on poets to figure out how credible a magazine is — that’s far trickier than it sounds.
So, I read through some popular high-acceptance rate poetry magazines, and when I find ones that strike me as respectable, I add them to the list. The list has grow quite a bit, and I’ve heard from thousands of poets that they used it to get their work published (often for the first time), and better yet, that they feel proud of their publication.
(Intermediate) List of Respected Poetry Magazines
After the list of beginner poetry magazines was a hit, I created another one. This time, I focused on poetry magazines that were highly respected but not household names. Often, people search for the “best poetry magazines” or the “top poetry magazines,” and so on. These bring up infinitely selective, cream-of-the-crop publications, but leave out a lot of amazing poetry magazines that are highly respected in the literary world but are often “buried” in search results for common keywords.
So, I started tracking them down and collecting them in the “List of Respected Poetry Magazines.” If your poems are being accepted in the beginner poetry magazine list, then I suggest you start moving over to this one. Creating these lists also had the unintended effect of giving poets a way to gauge their progress as published poets. That’s why I began tagging these lists as “Beginner” and “Intermediate” respectively.
At any rate, this list of poetry magazines has also springboarded poets into some incredible publications. Getting your work featured in these poetry journals in something to truly be proud of.
Poetry Guides
I’ve also written a few guides about how to publish poetry, including how to create the best poetry blog on WordPress, how to get started in poetry publication, and the ins-and-outs of copyright + poetry. You can find them below:
Vita Brevis Press. 